Person
Oriol Vinyals
Lately: Discovery Loop as Co-Founder, from Google DeepMind.
Recorded moves
Oriol Vinyals → Discovery Loop as Co-Founder, from Google DeepMind (Research Vice President)
Extended the Discovery Loop departure beyond systems engineering into core DeepMind research leadership, widening the hole it left.
In the archive
Hiring & Talent
The Biggest AI Hires of 2026 (So Far)
Fidji Simo relinquished her post as OpenAI's second-in-command to illness, Noam Shazeer and three Google veterans departed together to found a rival, and John Ternus rose to Apple's helm, rewriting AI's leadership map in 2026.
Hiring & Talent
Google DeepMind's Retention Playbook
A $2.4 billion Windsurf acquihire, Koray Kavukcuoglu's promotion and Demis Hassabis's step-back from chief executive trace how Google answered an exodus that sent Jeff Dean and Noam Shazeer toward rivals.
Frontier Models
Gemini's Momentum
Gemini 3 Pro's November 2025 launch and a Search overhaul unveiled at Google I/O 2026 built the product momentum Demis Hassabis's research organization needed, even as Jeff Dean led three senior colleagues out the door to found a rival science venture.